Peace Lab Kosovo 2023

 

By Anne de Graaf

 

This year we won’t be crossing the bridge. It breaks my heart that this year I cannot show my students a Kosovo that is moving forward—toward peace. It’s a long story that includes a tangled cluster of license plates, elections where hardly anyone voted, mayors who showed up for work, a country asserting its independence, another country and group of countries asserting their power and an endgame leaving everyone guessing. Are we heading for peace? The international perspective includes a narrative now of Kosovo being in the wrong. People here feel frustrated and betrayed.

 

So where does that leave Peace Lab Kosovo 2023? This is a qualitative research methods fieldwork class. We spent the first week in Amsterdam learning Balkan history. Now I’ve brought 20 AUC students from 14 different countries to learn from people in Kosovo who are watching years of peacebuilding unravel before their own eyes. Many thanks to Peace Lab Rwanda alum Lola Collingbourne who has helped coordinate a terrific program. Peacebuilding, peacemaking, peacekeeping—these are the themes we’re trying to understand better.

 

We will continue to meet with partners from both Albanian and Serbian communities. Due to the tension and movement of troops we will not travel to the north, but we can zoom with our partners there. We will visit Kosovar-Serbians in the south and hear their perspectives, as well as listen to Kosovar-Albanians in Prishtina and Prizren.

 

This photo is of the Newborn sign at the heart of Prishtina city center, a monument to Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008. In social science terms, it's a hidden transcript describing the mood of the country in a language of graffiti. Different (usually unknown) people paint different messages at different times. It once was covered with drawings of bullet holes, which were then painted over with hearts. This year, for the first time, the Newborn word was dismantled, its letters re-arranged and a new word has taken shape. What does it mean?

 

Please follow our blog as we take this 10-day journey to find the answer to that question and many more, learning from the Kosovar people on the frontlines of peace.